“Alright… okay, I have a few different versions I can do. You’re lucky— I actually just got in a shipment of leather shipped up from south, so the price hike I’ve been hearing about hasn’t hit me yet…” she trailed off for a moment, then shook her head. “Sorry. The simple option is just the two bags— easy enough— with more complex options up to fifteen bags and various smaller pouches too.”

  “Do you have one with ten? Smaller paw pouches near the front, larger near the back…”

  “Hm…” she was silent for a moment as she stared at the floor, dragging her paw out in strange patterns… planning, he realized. “Maybe. Sounds familiar…” she was quiet for a second, before she squinted at him. “Where are you from again?”

  “Black Rock—”

  “Black Rock Refuge!” Her eyes lit up with recognition, before she winced a second later. “Ah, right, I can see why you wouldn’t want to bring that up… yeah, I can do Black Rock Refuge style. Not the usual sort of thing I do, but… well. They’re not usually around, are they? And that was insensitive, wasn’t it? It totally was…” she grimaced. “Real shame what happened to them. You have my condolences— and my respect. The last stand of the Lords of the Peerless Paw is still legendary, even amongst those of us that weren’t there.” Cold comfort that was…

  Seeing that she’d touched on something sensitive, she quickly shut her mouth and just got to working, the rest of her job done in an awkward air of silence. She was really efficient with it, too— their paws might not be as good with tools as humans were, but they had twice as many, and it really showed with how expertly she managed the whole process.

  The silence was almost worse than what it’d replaced. It gave him time to think, and what a cruel thing that was… so, when he heard two small sets of footsteps creeping up on him, remarkably stealthy for kittens, he waited until the very moment they pounced to snap his tail out from under their paws. Instead of catching his tail as they were no doubt hoping, both of them collided into one another with a pair of adorable squeaks— before immediately turning on each other and transforming into a wrestling ball of fluff and childish spite.

  “Hey! What did I tell you two about bothering…” the leatherwork sighed after a moment, glaring at the kittens as they rapidly disentangled themselves from each other’s graps. “They’re not bothering you too much, I hope.”

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  “Not at all.” He gave both of them an ever so slightly smug look, just daring them to come at him again— “how could they? I heard them coming while they were half the room away.” Both the kittens, no doubt used to less observant prey— that was to say, those who weren’t cultivators— both pouted at him. “Besides, I can’t let you tie a ribbon around my tail today, because then I’d have to take it with me, and you’d be down a ribbon.”

  “I guess that makes sense,” grumbled the larger of the two kittens. “But we were so super close! Like this close!” He held his paws out, the distance between them getting smaller and smaller over the course of his sentence. Clearly, accurate retelling wasn’t something he’d learned yet…

  Chirping a laugh to himself, Avyr flicked his tail at the two of them, channeling a little burst of qi at them— enough to ruffle the fur on their faces and carry with it the faint sensation of the burning, pure— bright of his cultivation.

  Both of them stumbled back, wide eyed in surprise, then awe. “What was that—”

  “Again, again!”

  He just laughed softly as the leatherwork finally had enough of their antics, picking one up by the scruff and scooping up the other and dragging them out of the room. She gave him an odd look as she returned, quiet for a long moment. “You’re… a cultivator, aren’t you?”

  He nodded. “You figured it out?”

  “Whatever technique you just used made it obvious.”

  “Not a technique. Just a little bit of qi manipulation. I’m only in Shedding— nothing special.”

  A wry look crossed across her face— almost sad, for a moment. “You really have been living amongst the humans for too long. Only one of them could look at one of the honored cultivators and call them nothing special.”

  A few minutes later, her work was done— the bag ready for him, just as good as the one his parents had given him. Maybe better, even, what with the little metal buckles and various small improvements scattered about it that his old one hadn’t had. It looked sleeker, too…

  “Here.” She slipped it onto him, settling it neatly between his fur and watching intently as he stepped his legs through to their proper place— making sure it fit, or some other thing, he could not know. Her expression was inscrutable all the same. “Try not to break this one too…” he laughed, and paid her and started for the door— and stopped as she continued— “and remember…” quietly— “no matter how far you go, you carry with you inextricably the soul of our people. As do we all.”

  He stood there, in silence, then just… nodded, and left.

  Wondering, and wandering back home.

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